St Daniel School

#1211: Public Speaking

RECORD STORE TALES #1211: Public Speaking

The year:  1980.

I stood there in the gymnasium, in front of the whole school, holding my two cue cards in my hands.  I had the whole speech memorized.  This would be the second full performance.  I was already chosen as the best speech from my class, so now I had to say it in front of the school:   “My Trip to Alberta”, written by Mike Ladano with a little help from his mom.  It was the story of our summer 1979 trip to the mountains.  The exciting climax to the story was the moment that I fell into the Athabasca glacier.  It was August and I was excited to make a snowball.  ‘Twas the adults who gave me this idea.  “You’ll be able to make a snowball in the summer!”  So I ran towards the snow, and fell into a cold icy stream of water.  I was soaked and it kind of ruined the day for me, but on the other hand, it made for a great speech.  I did a great performance of it, certainly better than most of the other kids.

I came in second, because the teachers thought I probably received too much help from my parents.  I didn’t.  My mom provided the neat and tidy printing on the tiny cue cards, but the words were mine.  It made me bitter and I didn’t put that kind of effort into writing a speech in later years.

Public speaking topic in Grade 5:  Pac-Man

Public speaking topic in Grade 8:  Kiss

Public speaking topic in Grade 9:  Iron Maiden

The Kiss one…oh the Kiss one.  It was good.  I started it by shouting, “You wanted the best, you got the best!  The hottest band in the land, KISS!”  I know I was pissing off the Catholic school teachers every time I mentioned the album Hotter Then Hell.  I can’t say this wasn’t intentional.  I no longer wanted to participate in the big speech-off in the gymnasium.  No matter how great my Kiss speech was, there was no way I’d ever be chosen, so it was the perfect topic.

I have a love/hate relationship with public speaking.  I’ve always been good at it, but the creation of the speech and the anxiety leading up to it lead me to procrastination.  I had to do several more big ones through school.  In my grade 13 year, I had three class-long presentations to do, all within the space of a week.  I had another speech to do in my first year of Sociology at university.  I don’t remember a lot of specifics except that they went over well.  I try to be expressive and speak naturally.

There’s a line that kids always said back in school.  “When am I going to need to use this in my real life?”  Remember in Superbad, when Jonah Hill was talking about making tiramisu in Home Economics class? “When am I going to make tiramisu? Am I going to be a chef? No!”  I haven’t needed public speaking in my professional life, but in my personal life, the experience sure did come in handy.

I’ve spoken at two weddings, and now three funerals.  These things are necessary.

The year:  2025.

I did a eulogy at my grandmother’s funeral recently.  I spent a few weeks working on the speech and polishing it, but not rehearsing it.  I didn’t want that emotional experience, of reciting the speech.  I wanted the first real reading to be live at the funeral.  I was nervous as hell.  I had this idea in my head that I would know everyone in the room.  That was not the case.  My mom has a large family, and so many people came that I kind of recognized but could not remember well.  I became more and more nervous.  I had two panic attacks that day.

The priest, Father Phil, took us aside and told us the order in which the funeral would proceed.  I was last, but I knew my cue.  Fortunately, Father Phil was great (this is not always the case at a funeral).  During the service, he told us of a Bible passage that said “God’s house has many rooms,” and there is a special room prepared for everyone.  He asked what room my grandmother would choose to go to?  There was a long pregnant pause and so I said “the gardens!”  Father Phil said “Great; she would love the flowers in the gardens”.  Suddenly something clicked in my head.  I unrolled my speech, which by now had become a tight scroll.  I found two spots in the speech where I could tie into Father Phil’s gardens.

My moment came.  I started rough.  Starting is always the hardest part (unless you start with “You wanted the best grandma, you got the best grandma!” but I chose not to Kiss-ify my speech).  It took three or four sentences to find my voice and my rhythm, and I was off to the races.  I was brisk and expressive.  I started making gestures with my hands to emphasise words.  I was loose and improvised here and there.  Then came the two moments I was preparing for.

“It was always fun to visit Grandma’s house.  My dad and I would pick carrots from her garden – remember what I said earlier about the gardens?  She had the best carrots, and we took them all, much to her scolding!  [Improvised portion in italics.]

Then the second instance.  Speaking about driving her to the lake, and placing my hands in the steering wheel position, I said, “she would point out all the flowers along the way – remember what I said earlier about the gardens? – which I couldn’t stop to look at because I was driving!”

People laughed in all the right spots.

I sat down, and my dad clapped once, and shook my hand.  My mom and my aunt said “Great speech”.

The funeral ended.  My knees were limp and my hands were numb.  I sat, exhausted, and drank some lemonade (with gingerale, a delightful mixture), and just tried to unpack and unwind from what had just happened.

I was approached by friends.

“Great speech!” they said.

I was approached by distant relatives.

“Great speech!” they said.

I was approached by old friends of my parents.

“Great speech!” they said.  Even Father Phil said it.

I started to think to myself, I think I just gave the best speech of my life.  A moment that can never be re-captured.  It was live, it happened, it existed for a fleeting moment and now it is just a memory.

“I wish I had recorded myself,” I lamented.

“No, it was great, we will always remember it,” said everyone else.

But if I had recorded it…would it have been the same?  Would I have been distracted by the recording device?  Would I have been able to perform it exactly the same, if I knew it was going down on tape?  Would the added pressure have hurt the performance?  These are quantum questions we can never answer.  Sometimes the mere observation of an act can change the act, in physics and in life.  (Maybe there’s no difference between physics and life.)

One of the warmest moments came when an older gentleman walked up to me, rubbed my shoulders, and told me that the speech made him feel like he got to know my grandmother.  I was so overwhelmed with faces and names, that I have no idea who he was anymore.

One guest even told me he watched me on YouTube.  That was pretty cool.  He liked the speech, too.

The most important comment came from my mom, who said that my grandmother would have loved the stories I chose to tell in my speech.  Of course, that is the most important thing.  I have told a lot of stories about my grandmother over the last eight months.  Some of them were hilarious, but she wouldn’t have liked them.  For example, the time she gave me some money and told me to “go and buy one of your CD records.”  That’s funny, but she wouldn’t have wanted any stories that made fun of her, so I left all of that out.  If I had kept them in, the speech would have been more like a stand-up comedy routine!  And that would be fine for another time.

I think this speech was the best public speaking I’ve done to date, and I think it’s my proudest moment in my life.  And it all started in 1980, in a glacier in British Columbia.  If I hadn’t fallen in, maybe I would never have been able to do a speech like that for my grandma.  The universe is a multitude of possibilities.  Maybe I was meant to fall in, just as Gollum was meant to find the One Ring?  In this reality in which we all co-exist, I’m just trying to make it through day by day.  However it came to be, I did something that somebody had to do, and my grandmother is now smiling down on me.  I can hear her voice.  She would say, “That was lovely, Michael.  Just lovely.”

That’s more than enough.  However it came to be, the culmination of all these experiences coalesced into a moment that was there, and gone.  I’m just glad I was the conduit.  And it was a heck of a lot better than the 1983 Pac-Man speech!

To read the written version of the speech, click here.

#1113: Running Up That Hill

RECORD STORE TALES #1113: Running Up That Hill

By and large, 1998 was a pretty good year for me.  There was a lot going on musically with new albums by Iron Maiden and Van Halen (long awaited) coming out.  In January I moved in with T-Rev, into this little basement apartment.  It was a cool hang.  We both managed record stores, and the apartment was right near mine.   T-Rev had this “comfy couch” that was like kryptonite.  You couldn’t help but surrender to the comfy couch.  There were Christmas lights up all year round, and beaded entranceways.  Movie posters adorned virtually every wall.  He sought to make a place where gals and guys alike would want to come over and hang out.  We were both single.

I had my fully loaded Nintendo 64 and a handful of great games like Goldeneye and Top Gear Rally.  Our place was the place to be on a Friday night.  It was frustrating when T-Rev’s skills exceeded mine in both games, but that’s how it went down!  He was really, really good.  He was working at finishing both games, I was lucky to have made it as far as I did.  Friends of all kinds liked Nintendo 64 night on the comfy couch.  Trevor usually had beer and a bag of chips.

Some time in May that year was a typical gathering at the T-Rev residence.  The place was packed with people he worked with at the Waterloo Inn, including the woman that he would one day marry and is still his wife today!  There was a girl that I was interested in but didn’t return the sentiment, and another girl who had a thing for me but was unreciprocated.  I think the movie they chose to watch that night was Kama Sutra.  I wasn’t into it, and on that night I felt like a third wheel (or ninth wheel perhaps).

I was never very good at talking to girls and today I wonder if I have some kind of actual mental malfunction.  T-Rev would try to help me.  “Don’t quote movies man,” he advised me.  “Nobody gets it when you quote movies.”  I guess my hope was that one day, somebody would get it, and I’d meet a new soul mate.  However I tried to stick to Trevor’s advice and not quote Pulp Fiction lines at girls, hoping they too were fans of Samuel L. Jackson.

I seem to remember hurting my neck while washing my hair in the shower before the party, which was a common weakness of mine.  The girl that was interested in me gave me a neck rub, but it didn’t feel good at all.  I wasn’t able to relax.  I may have two separate parties mixed up here – Kama Sutra and hurting my neck might not have been the same night – but these are the memories coming back about that basement apartment.  One way or the other, at some time in the evening on May, I was feeling disconnected from everyone else.  It was one of those times where I felt alone in a crowded room.  I was lonely sitting there in that apartment with my thoughts, apart from the conversations surrounding me.  I wanted some fresh air, and maybe also some company.

“Anyone wanna go for a walk?  Anyone?  No?”

Everyone was content to stay in.  I put on my shoes and stepped out into the darkness of early evening.

We lived very close to Stanley Park Mall, which in turn is close to my old stomping grounds at St. Daniel School.  In the winter time, the large hill behind the school was popular for tobogganing.  In spring, I thought it might be a good place to catch a good view at the stars and surrounding city.  And so, I crossed River Road, and wandered through the mall parking lot.  Though it is all built over now, once upon a time just an empty field separated the mall parking lot and the hill.

The hill!  That green, steep hill!  Looking at it today, it seems so small but back then it seemed a mountain!  Perhaps the pitter-patter of children has been flattening it over the decades, but then it seemed as tall as the sky.  Located in Midland Park behind the school, it was home to so many childhood adventures.  Technically it was not on school property and sometimes the teachers would get fed up with the kids, and ban the hill from recess activities.  But what fun we had when it was allowed!  Running up that hill, running down, imagining if we caught enough air we could take off and fly!

What would I find on that hill on this night in 1998?  The view would be good at least, I was certain.  There it was in front of me, and so I took off running up just as I did as a little kid!  I may have been alone, but I smiled in glee as I flashed back to the golden carefree years.

Whew…running uphill wasn’t as easy at age 25 as it was at age 10!  But up I went, and upon reaching the summit in that pitch black, I leapt upwards and landed on the bald, grass-free patch at the very top.

“HEY!  WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?” came a startled voice from the darkness.

Apparently, I had interrupted a couple in the middle of coitus! Let’s just say they must have been having a bangin’ good time.

What could I do?  Without a word I just kept running down the opposite side!  As if to say “I meant to do that,” Pee-Wee Herman style, I just kept running.

I eventually made my way around the block, and back to the basement apartment.  That was enough walking for one night.  When I returned and told my story, everyone laughed and the general consensus was that I should have expected it!  I suppose they were right; that spot did have a reputation for make-out central for the teenagers in the early 80s.

That’s what I found when I went running up that hill.  The lesson learned:  never run uphill at night!